Wisdom in the Ancient World

by Trevor Curnow

'But where shall wisdom be found?' asked Job, and from across the ancient world came many different replies. Some conceived of wisdom in supernatural personified form and answered the question in appropriate terms. For others, wisdom was something far more human, manifested in a number of different possible ways. For many philosophers, on the other hand, it was simply the highest human intellectual attainment possible. However understood, wisdom was highly prized across the ancient world and throughout ancient history. To the extent to which there was a shared ancient culture, wisdom lay at the heart of it. However, the modern study of the subject has been very fragmented. Old Testament scholars, theologians, historians of philosophy, Egyptologists, Assyriologists, classicists and historians of ideas have all taken an interest, but there has been limited communication and co-operation between the disciplines.
This is the first book to bring the different aspects of the study of ancient wisdom together and present it as a subject in its own right, looking at wise deities, wise figures from myth and legend, wise characters from ancient history, practices associated with wisdom (including divination and healing), and wisdom as it appears in ancient literature. Familiar figures such as Solomon and Socrates rub shoulders here with less well-known ones such as Shulgi and Stilbides. Specially drawn maps accompany the text to provide a geographical context while a timeline provides a chronological one.

Genres: History, Philosophy

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of the preliminary works on a topic that give you a starting point or an idea of the complexity and size of the matter. Curnow do not take the approach of trying to define the wisdom he looks for in the ancient world, because a definition would bind the concept to a point in time and place and narrow the search. Rather, he does narrow the time and place, but not the concept - because when finding its roots and beginning the idea of wisdom takes form from a multitude of paths. Those paths are here exemplified. This makes the book something a bit text bookish, in the sense that it lists up person after person, vocation after vocation, text after text - and thus becomes too formulaic. You get a little information of each and sometimes a tie into the whole. Sometimes the information seems very relevant, sometimes it is not - because ancient stuff is hard to know too well because we have limited information. So, a person may be noted as “wise” if someone in some vicinity of time though of him or her wise - meaning it becomes a very broad and unclear idea - and notable persons are doomed to not make the cut. I could with ease find other examples, but for the arguments sake let’s get biblical - although they probably did not lack in wisdom - for instance, Solomon is of course included - but not David, just as Jesus is included but not Paul. Not that the discussion requires it, but it shows the problem of going broad. Anyway, all inn all we get the big picture by adding all the small ones together with time and place - we get an idea of how the concept grew into the more modern idea of wisdom. The author have made a good work in presenting a well of information gathered but have to do a good deal of “qualifying” to make it fit some resemblance of the concept. This is a solid work.